To the editor,

In the wake of Katrina, I look back to when I was a child. I was 10 years old and they called it “The Easter Flood of ’79.”

I can remember sitting on my front porch watching the water rise to our door steps. My father, being an MP in the National Guard at the time had to go out and direct traffic. That was the biggest problem there was at the time.

We didn’t worry about looters or people shooting you for gas and food. We took care of each other. Now, Katrina has come and destroyed Louisiana, Mississippi and parts of Alabama and people are taking everything they can get.

It’s everyone for themselves. I hadn’t thought of how much life has changed since I was a child and how hard it was for our children now. They face more difficult times than we every could have imagined. I hate for my 15-year-old have to see this, as my aunt who we rescued from Mississippi says, third world nation in our own back yard. What does it teach our young generation? That it’s OK to look out for number one! But it’s not, that person you turn down for help just may be an angel in diguise.

Reach out and help some one don’t let it be like the song goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

Thanks goes out to the EMA here in Selma, they helped my aunt and uncle out who have been displaced due to Katrina.

Bonnie Bearden